BAPHOTO 2018: FOUR ARTISTS WHO SHOULD NOT PASS UP
(Second Part)
The fourteenth edition of the specialized fair in Latin American photography Baphoto has an international and diverse selection emphasized on the different ways of approaching artistic exploration through the medium. At the Buenos Aires Fairground La Rural, Dr. Emilio Solanet’s pavilion is divided into eight sections, each one curated by a specific curator: Ana Luiza Fonseca for Photobook Tijuana, Alfredo Aracil for Fuera de Foco, Francisco Medail for Artista Homenaje, Florencia Portocarrero for Special Rooms, Mercedes Claus for Links Projects and Rodrigo Alonso for Videoprojects.
However, within this eclectic proposal there are four artists that should not be overlooked. These are Erica Bohm (PASTO), Karen Miranda Rivadaneira (+ Art), Marcelo Bordsky (Rolf Art) and Pablo Masino (Lateral).
Pablo Masino
At Lateral Gallery stand, eight works of Pablo Masino framed with paspartú, exhibit the intimate character the Tucumán artist. As if an ode to everyday life, Masino exposes isolated photographs of familiar and private situations that do not have a narrative coherence between them, but that do represent a permanent sensitivity of those who hold the camera in relation to their environment.
With a certain fascination for a lifestyle that could be defined as "anarchic" (within big quotes), Masino explores with voyeurism the daily rituals of his artist friends. Using the camera from a hyper subjective perspective, his photographs are established as an intimate -documentary- diary that illustrates a bohemian generation and its modes of living today: that is the case of a photograph in La Confiteria, located in the Chacarita neighborhood , donated a partner Masino lived for more than a year.
As for the curatorship and the distribution of the photographs, all the Lateral team - made up of artists - contributed their part. The result is precise: with decentralized photographs within the frame, the series - from which Grupo OMINT acquired a photograph yesterday afternoon - adds an even more personal value to the work, as if they were photos hung in any room.
Undoubtedly, of a subtle and intimate aesthetic, the work that is exhibited in the stand of Lateral has no waste.
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Fotografía de Pablo Masino adquirida por Grupo OMINT en BAphoto 2018. Ph: Francisca Etchegaray.
Erica Bohm
On the other side of the gallery wall that represents Pablo Masino, PASTO Galería exhibits a single show by the prestigious artist Erica Bohm. A tireless researcher, the Argentinean artist deals with remote topics such as the territoriality of the Antarctica and the construction of its landscapes or the representations that each individual from the media or the cultural industry is made of geographies that only know through the story or the images. On this occasion, the gallery took pieces from three different works - Galactica, Planet Stories and Satélite - all of them crossed by a theme: the fictionalization of spatial geography.
On the one hand, Galactica and Planet Stories emerge from a visit that Bohm made to NASA's control centers in Houston. After making a residency in the US, he used archival material from the trips made by the Apollo 11 expedition. From these photographs, Bohm enlarged the images in a large format to re-photograph them, but this time with a polaroid.
In this way, the medium - in this case the polaroid - suggests to the viewer that the artist's proximity to the photographed, as if Bohm had traveled to space to make these images. With this game of planes of reality, Bohm's subtlety and scientific style question the representations that people build based on images, films and science fiction stories with respect to outer space.
On the other hand, Satellite is constituted by two planes: one from Mars and another from the Moon. Both drawn by the data obtained at the Houston plant. Once finished, Bohm inhabits them with geometric figures. Thus, this questioning of mediated spaces is generated again - whether by means, science (satellite images), cinema or whatever - and normalized, but in reality nobody knows.
From the series of polaroids Planet Stories, a work was acquired in this fourteenth edition of BAphoto by the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires (MAMBA). In addition, much of the series will travel to the Museum of Queens, in New York, to a cycle of science fiction.
